Aliens (1986): Favourite Films Series

Aliens (1986): Favourite Films Series

Movie sequels are tough to do well, but one filmmaker has helmed two of the greatest sequels of all-time. James Cameron gave us 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day—one of the best action movies ever, as well as one of the best sequels—but before that, he followed up 1979’s Alien with 1986’s Aliens: the only other sequel he’s ever made (until all those Avatar sequels come out). Alien was a tough act to follow because it was damn-near perfect, but Cameron knew that in order to live up to the original, he had to take his movie in a different direction, which is exactly what he did, to stunning results.

As I said in my previous Favourites Films entry where I covered the first Alien (check that one out before continuing with this one if you haven’t yet), I rented all the other Alien movies from the video store after seeing the first Alien vs. Predator movie at a very young age. Unlike Alien, Aliens enthralled me the first time I saw it (and still enthralls me to this day). This wasn’t some slow-paced single-monster movie confined to a space ship, it was punctuated with shocks throughout the beginning, and then when the marines reached the xenomorph hive, the action went all-out, along with the horror, and never let up from there.  

One of the first things to really impress me about Aliens was the quality of the special effects. Much like Alien, this world felt real and lived-in. All the weapons the marines carried were unique and unlike any firearms I’d ever seen, and that’s because they were all custom-made specifically for this movie. Some of the effects that I don’t think hold up today are certain visual effects shots, like the dropship entering the planet’s atmosphere and Ripley and Newt in front of the crumbling processing station, but these fleeting moments don’t ruin the experience of the movie at all. The most crucial effects, though, the ones that had to work as well a second time as they did the first time, were the creature effects. The title Aliens perfectly implied there would be multiple creatures, but how many? James Cameron wanted dozens of xenomorphs this time. His concept was an ambitious undertaking, especially given the budget they were working within.

Cameron brought his friend Stan Winston in to do the creature effects, and boy did Winston nail it. As an adult, I appreciate both H.R. Giger’s original Alien design and Stan Winston’s re-design, but when I was younger, I thought the creatures in Aliens were far superior. The xenomorphs perform more dynamic movements this time, and while yes, they are shown more than in the original, they still aren’t shown a whole lot, it’s just that, in the original, so little of the single xenomorph is seen, it feels like a lot more by comparison. But every shot of the creatures creates maximum fright. 

The shots that always stand out to me are when an Alien comes out of the wall for the first time and attacks one of the marines from behind, when an Alien stops the door on the APC from being closed and gets shot in the head by Hicks, and when one rises out of the water in the sewers behind Newt. You never see that many Aliens on-screen at once, but the way Cameron borrows from Ridley Scott’s the-less-you-see-the-scarier-it-is method used on the first film, you get the impression that there really are dozens of them, especially with subtle techniques like the motion tracker representing multiple moving targets, and when the characters can hear them pounding on the pressure door. You don’t see them, your imagination fills it in, and then when you do see them in other scenes, it doesn’t disappoint. 

But in addition to giving the Aliens a slightly different look and greater numbers, James Cameron brought a new element to the story: the Queen Alien, which explains where all the eggs and smaller xenomorphs (or drones) come from. Actually, the whole concept of the xenomorph hive structure was from the original movie, but ended up as a deleted scene, which was restored for the director’s cut in 2003. As a kid, I thought the Queen Alien was cool in AVP, but not all that scary. When Ripley first discovers her in Aliens, that reveal freaked me out, but what really got me was the reveal that the Queen stowed aboard the dropship. Seeing her impale Bishop and rip him in half shocked me so much, I paused the tape (this was in the days of VHS), hit rewind, and watched it again. 

Aliens is a perfect example of why practical effects usually trump cgi. Even after seeing all the crazy stuff the Queen did in AVP, it wasn’t half as impressive as what she could do in Aliens, simply because I believed what I was seeing. The Queen looked so fearsome and so real, she scared the hell out of me, especially when she starts searching for poor Newt under the floor grates and ripping them up to try and grab her. I still dispute that this moment is as scary as anything from the original Alien. 

The fight between the Queen and Ripley in the power loader suit is as amazing today as it was back in 1986. I’m still not even sure how they achieved some of the shots, but most of it was done with a mix of miniatures and the full-sized animatronic puppet Queen. When you compare this ending to the ending of Alien, it’s easy to see how Aliens is a much more action-driven film. The endings are very similar, but in Alien, it’s a slow-moving nail-biter of a scene, and in Aliens, it’s a full-fledged fight scene, even though she’s trying to accomplish the same thing in both scenes.  

James Cameron created a fusion of action and horror, retaining the eerie feel from Alien, but injecting a new dimension to the story, as exemplified in two scenes in particular, when the marines are attacked in the hive, and when Ripley and Newt are locked in the room with the two facehuggers. Both of these scenes are scary and exciting. It’s horrific to see the many xenomorphs overtake the marines, much like it was horrific to see the one xenomorph sneak up on the Nostromo crew members and kill them, the only difference here is, this time we see a lot more of the creatures, and the characters are fighting back, adding that action element.

But action and creatures aside, what makes the horror part of it work so well, and the movie work as a whole, really, are the characters. I can’t imagine a version of Aliens that didn’t include Ripley (an idea that was thrown around when development on the sequel first began). Sigourney Weaver is even better than she was in Alien, with more depth to her character and more intensity. The marines, too, are great characters. They all look and act like real soldiers, but are also compelling and funny, so when they start getting killed off, you actually care.  

What’s interesting is how all the subsequent films (Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, both AVP films) seemed to try to emulate Aliens in varying degrees, instead of going back to the simple horror roots of the first Alien, but I can understand why. Aliens was such a perfect escalation of the initial concept, that to do anything different or smaller scale (like what they did with Alien 3 with going back to one xenomorph) would seem like a misfire. To do a pure action movie wouldn’t work, either. No other Alien sequel has been able to match the quality and/or success of Aliens, and not to sound like a pessimist, but it may never happen. Aliens is just that good.